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Rise of Islam
The '''Rise of Islam' lasted from about 565 AD until 768 AD. It began with the last climatic struggle between the age-old rivals, the Byzantines and Persians, that left both empires vulnerably to the rise of Islam. It then ended on the eve of the reign of the towering figure of early medieval Europe; Charlemagne. In the early 7th-century Arabia became the cradle of the world's third great Abrahamic religion, Islam. At its core, Muslims believe that, like Moses and Jesus before him, God sent the Prophet Muhammad to restore Abrahamic worship of the one true God, after what they perceived as straying; through him God spoke his last message to mankind. After uniting Arabia for the first time in its history, the Muslim Arab conquest rolled outwards, born on the fire of religious zeal. By the mid-8th-century, just over a century after the Prophet's death, the results were a vast empire stretching from the Iberian Peninsula in the west, to the Oxus River of Central Asia in the east. That tide did not flowed without interruption. There was bitter Muslim against Muslim fighting in the years before the establishment of the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), which ultimately led to the major schism in the history of Islam, between Sunni and Shi'a. But for a long time circumstances favoured the Arabs. Their first great enemies, Byzantium and Persia, had been left exhausted and weakened by the prolonged Roman-Persian War (572-628) and recurring outbreaks of bubonic plague. Whatever brought it to an end, and sometimes their defeat showed they had merely overstretched themselves, the Islamic conquest remains an astonishing achievement; only against the mighty walls of Constantinople, which endured two sieges, can the Arab armies be said to have definitively failed. And conquest was only the beginning of the story of the impact of Islam on the world, for great traditions of Muslim civilization were to be built on its conquests and conversions. If the Muslim world is considered the third inheritor of the Roman Empire, along with the Byzantine Empire and the so-called Barbarian Kingdoms, then it would show itself for a long time the most impressive, with an effervescence of culture unlike anything that had been seen since Classic Greece. History Early Roman-Persian War (565-602 AD) By the end of the reign of Justinian the Great, the Byzantine Empire was having an economic boom. An array of well built stone churches were being built across the Empire, irrigation was pushing argriculture out into the deserts, and a network of commercial routes criss-crossed the Mediterranean linking all the major centres. But Justinian's legacy is inevitably controversial, for he bequeathed to his successors many burdens: an imperial treasury in dire financial straits; an imperial army stretched thin in the wake of the most serious outbreak of Bubonic plague to hit Europe before the Black Death; and a delicate balancing act needed to maintain peace with the Empire's many enemies. Justinian's practice was often to buy peace, by paying tribute to Sassanid Persia and the Avars, a confederacy of steppe nomads who now dominated north banks of the Danube, the successors of the Huns. Unfortunately these Emperors proved neither as wise nor as forceful as Justinian had been, adopting short-sighted policies that within a generation would bring the Empire to the very edge of collapse. His nephew and immediate successor Justin II (565-574) opted to preserve the imperial treasury, by halting the annual tribute to the Avars. This prompted the renewed aggression from the Avars that pressured another Germanic peoples, the Lombards, to migrate en-masse into Italy in 568. The Lombards under their great leader Alboin (d. 572) invaded an Italy still devastated and depopulated by the Gothic War (535–554). As Alboin's kingdom grew in size until it comprised almost the whole peninsula, he had appointed members of his family to each region he conquered. When the Byzantines assassination him in 572, there thus emerged a high decentralised political structure with some 36 regions ruled by dukes. The Byzantines meanwhile managed to retain the major cities of Ravenna, Rome and Naples, as well as the coastal south. Thus the Italian peninsula became a patchwork of provincial states, and it lasted; Italy would never be united agian until 1861. While the Lombard Kingdom (568–774) was fragmented, these small-scale states were stable and tightly governed. City-life survived better in Italy than in any of the other Barbarian Kingdoms, even if we see the same regionalism. In 572 Justin also refused to pay tribute to the Sassanid Persians. Again his intransigence only increased the menace to the Empire. In two disastrous campaigns, the Persians ravaged Syria and captured the strategically important fortress of Dara on the upper Euphrates River. This was the start of decades of near continuous hostilities between the two great empire of the east, that would turn into a much more wide-ranging and dramatic final conflict from 602. Justinian's next successor, Tiberius II Constantine (574-582), opted for a different solution. He chose between his enemies, restoring the tribute to the Avars, while taking military action against the Persians. Yet with the legions campaigning with some success in the east, the denuded Danube defences proved too tempting for the Avars. Despite the restored tribute, in 582 they captured a key Byzantine fortress on the Danube, from which they could maraud across Macedonia and Thrace with impunity. The Byzantines were finally granted some respite during the reign of Maurice (582-602) when Sassanid Persia descended into civil war. The lawful claimant to the Persian throne, Khosrow II (d. 628), appealed to Maurice for aid against the rebels who had challenged his succession. Against the advise of many, Maurice did help him regain his throne and was rewarded in 591 with a new peace treaty between the Byzantines and Persians. Equally important was an opportunity to concentrate on other frontiers, where a series of successful campaigns in the Balkans pushed the Avars back across the Danube. However this victory had drained the Byzantine treasury dry, and Maurice responded by trying to slash the military spending. The result was mutinous legions who rose-up in 602, and put one of their own on the throne. Late Roman-Persian War (602-628 AD) The ensuing reign of Phocas (602–610) may be described as a disaster. He deeply distrusted the elite of Constantinople, and brutally purged his opponents. Meanwhile, the Persian king Khosrow II, using the murder of the man who had restored him to his own throne as a pretext, broke the peace treaty, prompting the second bloody phase of the Roman-Persian War (572-628). With Phocas already facing at least two separate internal revolts, the Persians made territorial gains not seen in centuries, quickly seizing Armenia and Syria, and raiding deep into Anatolia. As Byzantine troops were hastily transferred to the east, the Danube frontier was left almost completely devoid of troops, and the Avars, as well as by Slavs and Bulgars, began pouring into the Balkans. This was the start of the first phase of the Roman-Persian War (572-628), the climax of the struggle of East and West begun by the Greeks and Persians a thousand years earlier. It would turn into a much more wide-ranging and dramatic final conflict from 602; forty-six years of war that would do appalling damage to both empires, leaving them vulnerable to the rise of Islam. With such devastating losses, it was only a question of who would revolt against Phocas first. The answer was north Africa, virtually the only area of the Empire not fighting for its life. The governor of the province stopped the grain shipments to Constantinople, adding famine to its woes, and, considering himself to old, sent his son Heraclius to the capital. On his arrival at Constantinople, rioting mobs seized Phocas and laid him before Heraclius; the new emperor personally beheaded him on the spot. The greatest attribute of Heraclius (610-641) was his ability to inspire others even in the most desperate situations. The empire had great need of this: the Byzantine holding in Italy were barely managing to hold-out against the Lombards; Greece was now under pressure from the Avars, Bulgars and Slavs; the Persians had conquered Palestine in 617, bearing away Jerusalem's most famous treasure, the relic of the True Cross of Christ; and in 618 they made Egypt part of their empire, depriving the Byzantines of their main source of grain. In response, Heraclius remained in Constantinople and did nothing, or so it seemed. For twelve long years, he focused on reorganising the remnants of the Empire, seeing to the defences on all the frontiers, and rebuilding the army. In order to get the populous to accept the sacrifices he would demand, he even threatened to move the imperial capital to Carthage. In this, Heraclius' major innovations was the introduction of the theme system. While the imperial treasury was empty, Phocas had executed many prominent landowners during his reign and land was plentiful, especially in Anatolia. The new Byzantine army would be based on farmer-soldiers living on state-leased military estates, reminiscent of the early Roman citizen-soldiers or the later European feudal system. His military reforms would be the backbone of the Byzantine army for the next 800 years. Meanwhile, Heraclius also restored solvency to the empire by slashing non-military expenditure and melting down the gold and silver plate donated or demanded from the Christian Church. Heraclius was finally ready to go on the offensive in 622, in a campaign steeped in the character of a Christian holy war; a sacred image of the Virgin was carried as a military standard. He also personally led his army, the first emperor to lead a Roman army in the field for almost two-hundred years. Heraclius studiously kept his army of nearly 40,000 men as one large force, as he marched east through Anatolia and Armenia, and into Persia itself. With the Persians garrisoning their vast conquered territories, no single army could stand in his way. The Byzantines cut a swath across Persia, with each victory boosting their morale. They sacked the great temple of Takht-i-Suleiman, the centre of Persian Zoroastrian fire-worship. They made for the old Persian capital of Ctesiphon, to draw a large Persian army into battle and rout it. In desperation, the Persians turned to diplomacy, persuading the Avars to besiege Constantinople in the hope that Heraclius would withdraw to defend his capital. However, Heraclius sent just a third of his army back to Constantinople, and remained in Persia himself. He did send an avalanche of letters back to his capital discussing every detail of the defence, and moral remained high; the Avars had little hope of breaching the mighty Theodosian Walls anyway. When Heraclius delivered another crushed defeat to the Persians at the Battle of Nineveh (627), it proved the decisive victory of the war. The Persian army rebelled, murdering Khosrau II and raising his son in his stead. With both empires near exhaustion, an amicable peace was agreed, whereby the Byzantines regained all their lost territories, as well as numerous relics that had been lost in Jerusalem in 614, including the True Cross. The long duel of Persia and Rome was at an end. Returning to Constantinople, Heraclius was greeting by the entire populous waving olive branches and lit candle, as he march through the city baring the True Cross to a stirring ceremony at the Hagia Sophia. Yet the emperor was an exhausted and broken man, having worn himself out in service to the Empire. The crippling war between Persia and Byzantium had been to the detriment of both, and the relic of the True Cross would prove powerless in the face of a new predatory enemy; the armies of Islam. Life of Muhammad (570-632 AD) In the 7th-century Arabia became the cradle of the world's third great Abrahamic religion, Islam. Islam has shown greater expansive and adaptive power than any other religion except Christianity, appealing to peoples as different and as distant from one another as Nigerians and Indonesians. Yet none of the other great shaping factors of world history was based on fewer initial resources, except perhaps the Jewish religion. Throughout Classical Antiquity, Arabia had been a backwater on the fringes of two great empires, but of little interest to either, other than the occasional threat of raids from her superb horsemen. And Arabia had undergone little sophisticating fertilization from these higher civilizations. The innumerable nomadic Arab tribes were forever confederating and splitting in a kaleidoscope of shifting allegiances, moving from tribal anarchy towards centralised government, and then relapsing into anarchy again. The second half of the 6th-century was one such period of anarchy, with religious tension playing an important part in the crisis. While much of Arabia remained polytheistic, Judaism also had deep roots and Christianity had spread to the Persian Gulf during the 5th-century. Furthermore, while the Bubonic plague that had decimated both the Byzantines and Persians even before the massively destructive Roman-Persian Wars, the Arab population, insulated from the plague by the desert, was flourishing. There was no outlet for it, and this was straining traditional social practice. According to tradition, Muhammad (d. 632) was born around the year 570, into a merchant family in Mecca, and was soon orphaned. He spent much of his youth among the nomadic caravans, until his position improved through marriage to a wealthy widow. From time to time, the tormented young Muhammad would withdraw to the mountains in order to meditate and pray. It is said that on Mount Hira in 609, he began having the visions that would change his life, and changed world history. The archangel Gabriel supposedly appears to him, and commanded Muhammad to repeat the words of God; he described later how he seemed to be grasped by the throat by the luminous being. At its core, Muslims believe that, like Moses and Jesus before him, God sent Muhammad as the final prophet to restore Abrahamic worship of the one true God, after what they perceived as straying; through him God spoke his last message to mankind. From about 613, Muhammad began to preach in Mecca the uncompromising truth which God had revealed to him. However, monotheism was not a creed popular with those in Mecca whose livelihood depended on polytheistic idols; for people came to it from all over Arabia to venerate a black meteoric stone, the holy relic of the Kaaba. Furthermore, Muhammad went on to define a social and personal code which often conflicted with current ideas, for example in placing blood second to belief; the community was to be a brotherhood of believers, not the kinship group. While he won converts, he made enemies too, and in 622 was forced to flee Mecca after a plot to assassinate him. He and his followers journeyed to Medina about 250 miles further north; this event, the Hijra, was to become the beginning of the Muslim calendar. In Medina, Muhammad steadily acquired a stronger following, essentially becoming the religious, political and even military leader of the city; thus the political and religious coexisted in the Islamic community right from the very beginning. Meanwhile, his followers collected his preachings into what became the Qur'an, which is seen by Muslims as the actual word of God; the final definitive text was established in about 650. While relations between Mecca and Medina were often hostile, in 629 Muhammad managed to persuade the Meccans to allow his followers to make a pilgrimage to the city. His followers impressed the local citizens both by their show of strength and by their self-control, departing peacefully after the agreed three days. The following year, Muhammad took Mecca almost without resistance, and the inhabitants accepted Islam. Thus Mecca became the holy city of Islam, while Medina remained the political centre of the developing Islamic state. By the time Muhammad died in 632, the western half of Arabia was under Muslim control. Thus the great faith of Islam was born; the word means surrender as in, "to surrender oneself to the power of Allah is the beginning of wisdom". The foundation of Muslim life are the Five Pillars of Islam: the declaration of faith, "there is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God"; daily prayers, five times a day; the giving of alms or charity; the observance of fasting during the month of Ramadan; and the performance of the pilgrimage to Mecca, if possible. Muslim Conquests (632-717 AD) When Muhammad died, the community he had created was in grave danger of division and disintegration. Yet under his immediate elected successors, the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), the Muslim Arab armies embarked on an era of conquest so extraordinary, that only the example of the Mongols of the 13th-century can compare in the Middle Ages. Perhaps in fact, this was the key aspect in holding the Islamic community together, turning resistance to the Caliphs into a war against external enemies. The first four Caliphs are known as the Rightly Guided Caliphs, for being both unusually good generals and brilliant administrators. The unreconciled tribes of eastern Arabia were quickly conquered for Islam, and from there conquest rolled outward; initial raids for plunder, turned to conquest as success simply bred success. Six years after the exhausting Roman-Persian War (572-628) and two years after the death of the Prophet, the cities of Byzantine Syria and Persian Mesopotamia fell to the Arabs in rapid succession; the great city of Damascus in 634. The Byzantines and Persians both mounted responses to deal decisively with the Muslims, only to suffer respective crushing defeats at the Battle of Yarmouk (August 636) and the al-Qādisiyyah (November 636). On the heels of these victories, the Arab armies took Antioch in 637, and the next year the greatest prize of all, Jerusalem, after a protracted siege. This was a moment of profound significance for the young religion, for Islam saw itself as the natural successor of both Judaism and Christianity. Meanwhile, the vast Sassanid Persian Empire essentially fell to the Arabs after a decisive defeat at the Battle of Nahavand (642). Afterwards the last Sassanian emperor fled east and the empire began to break apart. By 651, the whole of Persia was part of the Muslim Caliphate, ending the Sassanid dynasty's 400 year rule of the region. While the Arab Muslims continued to push east eventually reaching India by the late 7th-century, in the west the conquest of Egypt began about 640. The defences of Alexandria were sufficient to keep them at bay for fourteen months, but in the end the Byzantines agreed to leave peacefully. The Arabs duly allowed them one year in which to do so, thus in 642 one of the richest provinces of the Byzantine Empire had been lost to the Muslim world with barely a fight. The Muslims are often blamed for the destruction of the great Library of Alexandria, one of the wonders of the ancient world, but this is probably Christian propaganda; it was almost certainly destroyed centuries before in the rioting and looting under Caracalla. By 649, the Byzantines weren’t even the masters of the Mediterranean anymore, with the Arabs having established an effective navy. They won their first major naval victory at the Battle of the Masts (655). Ultimately, the key to Islamic success was their intense reliance on heavy cavalry, just on the cusp of the arrival in Europe of the stirrup from China; cavalry would be king on the battlefield from now on, until the arrival of the longbow in the 14th-century. Yet the Arabs still had other great military advantages. Their armies were recruited from hungry fighters, to whom the over-populated Arabian desert had left few alternatives. Also the lenient tax policies of the Muslims, as well as their tolerance of religious and ethnic minorities, meant the invaders were often welcomed by locals; Monophysite dominated Egypt is just one obvious example. There was a brief respite in the seemingly relentless Arab onslaught between 656 and 661, when the Muslim world entered a period of bitter civil war. In the early Islamic community, the majority believed that the successors of Muhammad should be elected, but some believed that Muhammad's direct family had been divinely ordained. In an attempt to heal this rift, Muhammad's cousin Ali was elected the forth Rashidun Caliph in 656, but he proved such a controversial figure that it resulted to a civil war. After Ali's death in 661, Mu'awiya (d. 680), the leader of the struggle against him, established himself as the undisputed Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), with a new centre for the Arab empire, Damascus. Against considerable opposition, Mu'awiya also established a new principle, that the role of caliph would be hereditary rather than elected. However this civil war led to the major schism in the history of Islam, between the majority Sunni and minority Shi'a, which persisted as an underground dissident movement. Under the Umayyads, the Muslim Arab conquests rolled on. In north-west Africa, Byzantine Carthage was captured in 698, and destroyed yet again. In 711, the short journey across from Africa bought an Arab army with Moorish allies into Visigothic Hispania, beginning the final thrust of Arab expansionism in the west; the commander, Tariq, is commemorated in the name Gibraltar, which means Jebel Tariq or "mount of Tariq". In a frequently repeated pattern of history, the Muslim invaders were in fact invited to assist one side in a quarrel among the Visigoths, during the painful process of conversion from Arian to Orthodox Christianity. They rapidly took control and suppress both squabbling parties. Within just two years, governors appointed by the Caliph in Damascus were ruling almost the entire peninsula bar the north, where the Christian Visigoths and ever independent Basques were confined. This tiny enclave of Medieval Christian Spain, protected by mountain ranges to the east and south, would be the roots of the eventual Reconquista ''of the Iberian Peninsula. Finally, about a hundred years after the death of the Prophet, the Arab armies were at last brought to an end, although only after two sieges of Constantinople and a reverse against the Franks near Tours. Meanwhile in Asia, the frontier of Islam settled-down along the Oxus River, after a crushing Arab defeat at the hands of the Khazars in Azerbaijan, and a clash with Tang China at the Battle of Talas (751); for the Arabs, an interesting fringe benefit of victory was that captured Chinese soldiers revealed secrets of Chinese papermaking. Whatever brought it to an end, and sometimes their defeat showed they had overstretched themselves, the Islamic conquest remains an astonishing achievement. And conquest was only the beginning of the story of the impact of Islam on the world, for great traditions of Muslim civilization were to be built on its conquests and conversions. Ending the Muslim Tide in Eastern Europe (717-768) The Muslim Arabs tide born on the fire of religious zeal seemed destined to spread Islam by the sword throughout Europe and the world. Only one campaign had been consistently unsuccessful, the capture of Constantinople itself. The great city was first besieged by land and sea in 674, but it was unsuccessful, largely due to a secret weapons that the Byzantines had recently invented, ''Greek Fire. The invention is ascribed to a Syrian engineer called Kallinikos, who brought it to Constantinople after his province was overrun by Muslim armies. This flammable liquid could be sprayed or thrown at enemy ships with devastating results, burning even while floating on water, and was almost impossible to extinguish. It was considered such a state secret, that even today we don't know it's exact composition, although it was almost certainly petroleum-based. Four decades later in 717 and after years of preparation, a massive Muslim Arab force, of some 80,000 soldiers supported by a fleet of 1,800 ships, laid siege to Constantinople again; the Siege of Constantinople (717–718). Under the dynasty founded by Heraclius, the Byzantine Empire had endured cataclysmic events, but survived to eventually sabilise her reduced frontiers. However, the forth emperor of this line lacked the finesse of his predecessors, and the 7th-century ended with a revolt. This ushered in a period known Twenty Years' Anarchy (695–717), where a rapid succession of short-lived and incompetent emperors ruled in Constantinople. Nevertheless, in this desperate hour of need, one of the greatest Byzantine emperors was elevated to the purple, Leo III (717-741). He was a generals of humble birth who had successfully resisted Muslim attacks on his own territory in Anatolia, and possessed a keen understanding of Arab mind; he is said to have spoken fluent Arabic. Leo went on to outsmart the Muslim besiegers at every turn. To cut-off Constantinople from resupply by sea, part of the Arab fleet tried to sailed-up the Hellespont to the north of the city, but most of the ships were destroyed by Greek Fire. Leo then persuaded the Slavs and Bulgars who occupied Macedonia, tradition enemies of the Empire, to make common cause against the Arabs. They constantly harassed the Muslim supply-lines and foraging parties with hit-and-run raids, and the besieging army became crippled by famine and disease during an unusually hard winter. When the spring of 718 arrived, the Muslims tried to reinforce their army by land and sea, but both ended in disaster: a Byzantine force managed to ambush this second Arab army in the hilly terrain of Anatolia; and Christians sailors within the second Arab fleet defected, helping the Byzantine navy destroy the helpless ships with Greek Fire. After thirteen months, the Arabs were forced to abandon the siege, only to endured a host of calamities on their journey home; fewer that half the army managed to drag themselves back to Damascus, while only five ships escaped the Byzantine navy and winter storms to see their home ports again. The Byzantine victory in the second siege of Constantinople was one of the most important in European history, stopping the Muslim advance into Europe; the mighty Theodosian Walls would continued to do so for centuries. Nevertheless, having saved Constantinople, Leo III turned around and unleashed a religious firestorm that would rip the Byzantine Empire apart for the next century; the Iconoclasm Controversy (726-842). Ending the Muslim Tide in Western Europe (717-768) The Frankish Realm was Western Europe's dominant political power, and would continued to be until the later division became permanent in the mid-9th-century. After Clovis, though there was dynastic continuity, political structures were fragile things, dependent on strong kings; ruling was a very personal activity. The Frankish custom of divided inheritance, and frequent warfare did not help. A succession of feeble kings after Dagobert I (634–639) led to more independence for the landed military-aristocracy, who became political players on their own account, in the four royal courts of Austrasia, Neustria, Burgundy, and Aquitaine. Aristocratic and indeed ecclesiastical political maneuvering centred around a leader of the court, known as the Mayor of the Palace, who increasingly substituted their own interest for their king's; in a pattern similar to what would happen in 12th-century Japan, resulting in the rule of the Shoguns. They gradually add to their domestic duties the roles of tutor to royal princes, chief adviser to the king, and eventually even commander of the royal army. After the mid-7th-century, the conflicts between Frankish kingdoms of the past thus evolved into a power struggle and outright warfare between the various Mayors. Mayor Pepin II of Austrasia (d. 714) won out at the Battle of Tertry (687), and henceforth came to overshadow the Merovingian royal line; he can be seen with hindsight as the founder of a new royal dynasty. He was marched in his power only by Duke Odo of Aquitaine (d. 735), a formidable political operator in both the Frankish and Visigothic realms. After Pepin's long rule, his illegitimate son Charles Martel (718-741) emerged victorious from an internecine struggle with Pepin's only legitimate male descendants, a grandson; from his first name, Carolus in Latin, his descendants became known to history as the Carolingians (714-987). As the de facto master of the Frankish Realm, his reputation for ruthlessness further undermined the king's position; his nickname Martel or "the Hammer" was earned for his military prowess. In recent decades, there had emerged a new and powerful threat to the Franks, Muslim Spain. By 717 the Muslim Arabs had established a foothold north of the Pyrenees at Narbonne, from which they almost took the city of Toulouse in 721, only to be repelled. However, the Arabs returned in force in 732, sacking and plundering Bordeaux. Charles Martel used this opportunity to subdue Aquitaine, offering the Mayor aid only in exchange for the recognition of his preeminence. The victory of a Frankish army led by Charles Martel against the Muslims at the Battle of Tours (732), would be hail in medieval Europe as the landmark battle that saved France from falling under Muslim rule, as Spain had done. In truth, Muslim raids continued for years afterwards, and more likely an uprising by Moorish mercenaries in Spain in 741 prompted the Umayyad Caliphate to realise that their vast empire had reached the natural limits of its extent. While Charles Martel is remembered for his military prowess, he also laid the groundwork for strong centralised government. It is clear from the evidence, that his government was complex and document based in a very Roman way, and he was active throughout the realm, intervening a long way from the Austrasian court; now the only court. After the turmoil of the previous decades, it is clear that the Frankish Realm had a pretty solid at its base although ramshackle and often violent. This was at least in part the result of the constraints on aristocratic choices. Politics however self-interests revolved above all around the court, and for a long time local power-bases were weak, making going-it-alone impossible. Thus the dice were weighted in the favour of central power. Nonetheless, Charles Martel himself certainly maintained the fiction of Tours, in order to lay the groundwork for supplanting the Merovingian Dynasty. Charles himself maintained the fiction of Merovingian power, and his son Pepin III (743-769) did the same at first; Pepin himself had emerged from another succession struggle with his elder brother. Yet in 751, he decided to depose the last Merovingian king, confining him to a monastery, and had himself crowned King of the Franks. In this he had the support of the archbishop of Rome, who famously pronounced "he who holds the power, should wear the crown". Such direct involvement in the dynastic politics of Europe was a significant step for the Christian Church, with benefits for both; Pipen sought legitimacy for his usurpation through the Church, while the archbishop needed powerful friends to maintain his independence against the Lombards, who by 751 had conquered Byzantine Ravenna. The archbishop of Rome drew the dividend on its investment almost at once. Pepin defeated the Lombards and in 756 granted the papacy temporal sovereignty over all the lands encompassed by Rome and Ravenna; the foundation of the Papal State that still exists today, albeit in a much reduced form. This was the beginning of eleven hundred years of the secular authority enjoyed by the pope over his own dominions as a ruler like any other ruler. Carolingian power would reach its fullest extent under Pepin's son, the towering figure of early medieval Europe, Carlemagne. Among his many achievements was establishing the only empire in history to unite all of France and Germany, apart from a few years under Napoleon and Adolf Hitler. Category:Historical Periods